About 30 groups in India, big industry to individual academics, are trying to develop vaccines to fight COVID-19, said Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the government, Professor K Vijay Raghavan.
India has reported 6,566 new novel coronavirus cases and 194 deaths in the past 24 hours. This is the second-highest number of deaths in a 24-hour period since the outbreak began.
The total number of cases is now 1,58,333, the number of deaths linked to the infectious virus is 4,531 and the number of people who have recovered is 67,692, according to data from the Union Health Ministry this morning.
The Supreme Court today asked some hard questions about what the Centre and states have done to help the migrant workers travelling on special trains. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was representing the Centre, faced at least 50 questions from the three-judge bench that involved food, funding, shelter and the entire logistics of transportation. "The major problem is the transportation of migrants and providing them food. The first problem is of transport. They are waiting for weeks even after registration. Are these people being asked to shell out any money at any stage? How is the state paying," the judges questioned.
Earlier this week India became the tenth most affected country following four consecutive days of record spikes in daily cases and more than 6,000 new cases being reported every day since May 21.
Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Delhi remain the worst-affected states, with Maharashtra alone reporting over 50,000 COVID-19 infections. The surge in cases comes amid easing of lockdown relaxations and the restarting of one-third of all domestic flights.
